‘The First Lady’ presents three influential women and nd a century of history encompassing wars, presidential scandal and America’s gender and race fault lines.
The ambitious Showtime drama series proved an irresistible challenge for Oscar-winning director Susanne Bier. While its subjects — Eleanor Roosevelt, Betty Ford and Michelle Obama — each have a “compelling and gripping” story, the sum is even greater, Bier said of her first biographical project.
“It was interesting to me that it wasn’t one biopic” by focusing on first ladies of disparate experiences and eras “in a way it puts women’s situation in the world very much in perspective,” Bier said in an interview.
‘The First Lady’ stars Gillian Anderson as Eleanor Roosevelt, Michelle Pfeiffer as Betty Ford and Viola Davis as Michelle Obama. The presidents — secondary to their wives in this telling — are portrayed by Kiefer Sutherland as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Aaron Eckhart as Gerald Ford, and O-T Fagbenle as Barack Obama.
The series examines both personal and political chapters, but it is historical fiction and doesn’t pretend to be a documentary, Schulman said. “We had to imagine what happened in between the events and the things that have been written about,” she said during a panel discussion.
Bier said the first-lady role doesn’t exist in her native Denmark. While she was familiar with the women portrayed in the series, she gained new respect for them.
All fought to be taken seriously as first ladies after spending part or much of their adult lives supporting their husband’s ambitions. Ford and Obama are depicted as deeply reluctant to make the White House their temporary home — Ford because she had spent so long in the political trenches after giving up her own dreams, Obama because she feared for her husband’s safety as the first Black president.
Despite the passages of decades, there are striking similarities in the walls “that these three women banged up against,” Bier said. “Yes, our society has changed, history has changed. But it still is very much a man’s world we are living in, which is way I find it incredibly important to do (such) a show.”
The First Lady is envisioned as an ongoing anthology series, with new presidential spouses part of future editions. Among the possibilities that Schulman and Bier find intriguing: Dolley Madison, Jacqueline Kennedy and Hillary Clinton.
